


Five Kisses

by Miss_M



Category: Craobh-Òir agus Craobh-Airgid | Gold Tree and Silver Tree (Fairy Tale), Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/F, F/M, Kissing, Missing Scene, Multi, Sexual Content, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-06-29 18:08:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19835722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: Gold Tree had always been afraid. It would take more than one happy marriage to one other person to cure her of it.





	Five Kisses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ruis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruis/gifts).



> I own nothing.

The waves lifted and lowered the plank beneath Gold Tree’s feet, as though she were sitting in a cradle rather than on a bunk covered in cloth of gold, in Prince Séan’s cabin on his longship. She was dressed in a new kirtle and wimple, woven for her wedding, and her brow was bound with the circlet of gold and copper her husband had put there during the marriage rite.

Her husband sat beside her, in his blue cloak and tall boots, his brow bound also by gold and copper. Gold Tree could feel his thigh the length of her own, but Séan’s hands rested in his lap, as her hands did in hers. 

“You are safe now,” he said, his accent twisting the familiar words like a torque. “Once we are in Ireland, all shall bow before you and none will dare harm you. Not even your kin.”

The sea swelled rhythmically, the longship creaking below and above them, and Gold Tree thought of how easily a wave could take them, how fires sometimes broke out on wooden ships, or men sworn to their prince turned on him with naked swords. When she turned ten, her mother told her how bonny her pale skin was, then ordered her to go outside and play in the sun. When she was two-and-ten, her mother used to comb her long, pale hair so thoroughly that Gold Tree had to bite her lips lest she cried out in pain and was scolded for her weakness. When she was five-and-ten, her mother watched her while bathing and declared her too thin and stubborn one day, too fat and greedy another. 

Gold Tree had always been afraid, even before the day her mother spoke to the trout in the well. But she was her father’s daughter as well as her mother’s, and her father was wise and wily enough to send her away and take the burden of Silver Tree’s mercurial wishes on himself. 

Gold Tree turned to face her husband. He watched her, his hands still loose in his lap. 

She closed her eyes and leaned in to kiss him. His reddish beard tickled her nose, so she nearly sneezed, then a wave lifted the ship and tipped Gold Tree toward Séan so their noses collided, a jar of bone and cartilage like hitting her arm on a beam in her father’s hall while dancing, and then she had to laugh.

She could feel Séan smiling, then the ship slid down into the trough between two waves and Séan followed the movement, parting his lips around Gold Tree’s and leaning his body into hers, and she thought that his beard tickled quite pleasantly. She let her body follow his as the ship rocked them to and fro, and the moist warmth of his mouth plucked her like a flower from among her crowding fears.

*

Séan stank of blood and horse sweat, his gloves still on his hands and his bow slung across his back. He had tracked mud into his wife’s chamber, and thought idly that she would be cross with him for it. 

He pulled off his gloves, but her flesh was as cold and pale as a stone in a mountain brook, and she neither smiled nor frowned in response to his fingers on her face and in her hair, his heartbeat under her cheek as he held her lifeless body to his chest, nor even the kisses he planted on her brow, her nose, her lips parted and unbreathing and blue like winter.

*

Death, Gold Tree learned, was an absence. 

Of course, she could not have learned this while she was dead, for while dead she was nowhere, in notime, with no body and no sense of herself or any other thing. Nothing existed, and she was nothing.

The first thing which _was_ , the crank which turned the world to set it spinning again, was a sensation: the moist warmth, the ring of soft lips gripping her flesh, the suction as someone pulled her forefinger into their mouth.

Gold Tree lay motionless as part after part of her body came back into existence, her blood streamed again through her veins, her chest rose and fell, her fingers and toes tingled, and she opened her eyes and saw, not her husband’s red curls as she’d expected, but a woman’s long, chestnut hair. They were in a barren room with a view of the sea, Gold Tree lay on cold marble, and the woman was bent over Gold Tree’s hand.

The woman with chestnut hair released Gold Tree’s finger, turned her head away – her hair hiding her still from Gold Tree’s gaze – and spat something out. The something made a sound like an apple pip striking the floor. 

“Nasty little thing,” the woman said in the accent of Gold Tree’s homeland, and Gold Tree’s heart fluttered to hear it, while her eyes sought in vain a clear view of the woman’s face. Her hand curled protectively, her forefinger damp with saliva and turning cold in the air.

“Who are you?” Gold Tree said. Her throat felt like an unoiled hinge, though she knew the answer already, for the heavy key ring, which Gold Tree herself had used to wear, hung clinking from the woman’s belt. Only the prince himself or the prince’s wife would be allowed to carry and use all of the household’s keys, enter any cellar or armory or tomb.

The woman’s face when she turned at last so Gold Tree could see her, was first startled, then delighted, then worried, the moods scudding across it like clouds over a meadow. Her hands were warm as she touched Gold Tree’s arm and curled hand, but her smile at seeing Gold Tree alive again was even warmer.

“I’m called Mòrag, my lady,” she said, smiling through her fears. 

Gold Tree had always been afraid, but a second wife must be beset by many fears too, she thought, not the least of which was being brought low by the return of the first wife. Séan must have loved her, Gold Tree, very much and grieved her sore, if he’d gone all the way back to Scotland to find another bride – a solace and a reminder both.

“Mòrag,” Gold Tree said, stretching out the syllables, rolling them on her tongue like drops of honey and cold spring water (she was suddenly, terribly thirsty), “would you do something for me?”

“Anything, my lady.”

Gold Tree smiled and held up her hand with the bleeding forefinger. Her whole arm trembled with the effort. “Kiss it better some more? Please?”

Again emotions tumbled across Mòrag’s face, quick, quick, quick, till at least she smiled, and she took Gold Tree’s still-cold hand in her warm hands, and she touched the bruised and aching tip of Gold Tree’s finger to her pursed lips, before she opened her mouth and began to suck the first two knuckles, steadily yet gently, her cheeks hollow with it. Mòrag looked up at Gold Tree while she sucked, her blue eyes dancing with mischief and moist with lingering fear. Gold Tree did not try to rein in the sigh that escaped her when Mòrag flicked her sore finger with the tip of her tongue, as though she were sucking the strength back into Gold Tree’s body through the wound Silver Tree had inflicted. 

*

Séan’s kisses devoured her like she was roast lamb and onions, a favorable omen, an enemy’s still-beating heart. He crushed Gold Tree to his chest and kissed and kissed her, his beard scratching her so she wanted to scream with laughter, his saliva and, she realized, his tears dripping off her own chin. 

“My wife,” he panted into Gold Tree’s hair. “My love.”

Gold Tree struggled free from his embrace, seized his hand when she caught his hurt expression, squeezed it tightly. Her eyes sought out Mòrag, who stood back, looking demurely at the floor, her thin shoulders hunched. 

“Mòrag, come here,” she said, and after a moment Séan too extended his free hand to his second wife, to fold her into their embrace and feel her shoulders straightening and pushing back, no longer bowed down with the fear of being cast out, sent away, unloved. 

“Silver Tree will come back,” Mòrag said softly while Séan kissed her brow and Gold Tree stroked her chestnut hair. “When she does, I know what we should do.” 

*

Gold Tree had always been afraid. Even when her husband promised her his protection and brought her onto his longship, she could not stop thinking of the deep, cold sea churning under them. Even when Mòrag’s cleverness brought her back from the dead, Gold Tree trembled at the thought of her mother’s bloody-minded persistence, or how much love a man could have to share around. And when Silver Tree’s longship appeared on the horizon a second time, and Séan, wily and wise, armed and hid himself and his men, while Gold Tree and Mòrag went down to the shore with bread and salt, Gold Tree’s knees wobbled with every step at the thought of her mother, of the nothingness of death, of the husband and wife she could not hope to see again if things went foul for her this time.

Then Mòrag tricked Silver Tree into sipping from her own poisoned cup of mead, and Séan’s men surrounded Silver Tree’s escort so they could do nothing save lay down their swords and return to their longship, and Gold Tree knew she was truly safe. Yet still her hands trembled, her feet stumbled on the path, her mind whirred like a spindle. The habit of being afraid did not desert her at once, not even when she watched her mother’s corpse put into the ground.

But sun and rain washed the land clean every day, and the household needed her constant attention, and she woke each day lying in bed between her husband and wife, held warm and safe between their bodies. If the day dawned cold and grey, spitting rain down the chimney to make their hearth-fire hiss in response, they might pull the blankets over their heads, blonde and russet and chestnut, a mound of flesh under the covers. And if dawn broke bright as polished bronze, Mòrag might push down the covers, and Séan might pull up one or another woman’s nightshirt, or sometimes both at once, all before they were properly awake.

The morning gusted with a cold wind heralding a storm, yet brilliant with sunshine like red and yellow gold streaking into their bedchamber. 

“My love,” Séan panted in Gold Tree’s ear, brushing her hair away from her flushed face as he parted her legs, which trembled from their combined ministrations, and nudged his cock into her.

Gold Tree sighed and arched her back, so Mòrag could lean over and take her nipple into her mouth. 

“My wife,” Mòrag whispered and teased Gold Tree’s nipple with her tongue. 

Gold Tree gasped and twitched, one hand gripping Séan’s shoulder while with the other she tugged Mòrag up by the hair to kiss her. Then Séan’s tongue and lips claimed her, Mòrag kissing her cheek and the corner of her mouth, laughing that his beard tickled them both.


End file.
